Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath

INTRODUCTIONChanging Perceptions in the
Historiography of Polish-Jewish
Relations during the
Second World War
JOSHUA D. ZIMMERMAN

The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the
interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to
eradicate.

—E. H. Carr, What Is History?

For a half-century since the Second World
War, Poles and Jews remained bitterly divided over the events that transpired
during the German occupation. With little physical contact between the two
peoples during the Cold War, and the imposition of ideological conformity inside Communist Poland, dialogue on the war years was severely hampered. In
its place, knowledge about the Holocaust in postwar Poland was largely confined to oral histories and official narratives that emphasized shared Polish-Jewish
suffering and Polish aid extended to Jews. Jewish perceptions during this time
were similarly shaped by survivor testimonies that often spoke of widespread
Polish antisemitism and indifference to the fate of European Jewry during the
Holocaust.

Thus, for some forty-five years after the Holocaust, the literature on wartime Polish-Jewish relations was divided into two mutually exclusive camps:
apologetics and condemnation. When referring to Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War, historians in the apologetics camp described Polish
aid to Jews as well as Polish passivity due to Nazi reprisals as the principal Polish responses to the Nazi genocide carried out on Polish soil.
1 In stark contrast
to the negative image of wartime Polish behavior abroad, a widely respected

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.